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If you're a "Somerville Journal" subscriber or a fan of MIT
DJ/performer Patrick Bryant, you're familiar with "SpeakOut": an
anonymous call-in column for local readers to talk about … whatever.
It's great reading. The concerns — parking tickets, the police chief,
the potholes on Temple Street — seem uniquely local: Somerville in six
columns.

But public radio listeners may know that there's another Summerville —
a small Georgia town in the foothills covered by the national public
radio show "This American Life" July 30. The primary local employer in
Summerville is the biggest denim mill in the world. The classifieds
advertise a two-bedroom house for $75,000. The residents are slightly
liberal compared to neighboring counties but still basically
conservative in outlook.

And to judge from "Chattooga Soundoff," they're just like us.

Chattooga Soundoff is a fall 2009 addition to the "Summerville News"
that caught fire, said staff writer Jason Espy, who also provided the
town info above. It gets about 100 calls and e-mails per week.
(SpeakOut is phone-only. Sensibly, neither paper puts the column
online. Now that's how you make print relevant.)

Sure, the columns — I read all the August ones — aren't identical.
Contrary to stereotypes of terse Yankees and talkative Southerners, the
Soundoff tells people to "keep your comments brief" while SpeakOut
invites people to "vent." It changes the rhythm of the humor when
you're reading the entries out loud at a party: clever one-liners
versus extended rants.

The Georgia column definitely has more talk about God, who
gets short shrift in the SpeakOut, whose primary character is Mayor Joe
Curtatone. (One is despised, the other revered. Guess which.)

SpeakOut is more dour, averaging one upbeat call per week: praising the
China Delight restaurant, say, or Cambridge-based oldies radio station
WJIB. In contrast, 11 of the 74 Aug. 5 Soundoff contributors gave
credit where they thought it was due: to a hay roller, a barbecue
stand, Soundoff itself.

But once a Somerville reader gets over the surprise of people being
nice and talking about God, the columns look awfully similar —
especially because SpeakOut callers tend to be more right wing than the
average Somerville voter.

Contributors talk back to one another.

In Summerville:

This is to the one that complained about their child having homework: they are in school eight hours a day.

In Somerville:

This is for "Breastfeed in private." I am tired of when I go to a
restaurant and I have to look at your ugly mug while I'm eating.

Don't come here for commentary on national and international affairs:
In Georgia this August there was much kvetching about "Smitty" the
sheriff, property tax increases, and churchgoers being rude. The
Massachusetts crew complained about the police chief, the budget, and
college students being rude.

One contributor to the Aug. 19 Soundoff even used the term "Scummerville."

There's only one key place the columns differ — aside from the religion
content. Both generate their own, very specific internal obsessions
that have nothing to do with the issues of the day. SpeakOut has been
arguing for months over breastfeeding in public and DPW guys drinking
coffee at Dunks. In Georgia, it's the absence of a Krystal hamburger
joint (similar to White Castle), fried catfish, and whether Chevys
stink.

The only car that couldn't outrun a cop is a Chevy. You never saw Bonnie and Clyde driving a Chevy.

This doesn't make Espy too happy — he'd rather see substantive
dialogue. But it's exactly the kind of weirdness that keeps this
SpeakOut fan hooked. We hang on through repetitive rants and rages for
the rare moment that is truly bizarre. Like this, from 2009:

Someone help chip boy

To all the people of Somerville: a good kid is dying. He has a chip in
him. Who knows exactly what that means? And he's young. Now he's dying
young. Someone needs to stop him as soon as now.

Who, indeed, knows exactly what that means? And who can escape the dark shiver embodied in this Soundoff comment:

Everyone's secret life will be judged.

Yes, we're all in it together. Mason or Dixon, everyone hates the same
things. Taxes. Beat-up roads. Drivers who don't signal. People who
leave junk out on the curb. Lazy, incompetent, unnecessary municipal
employees. The water bill. Those noisy kids out on the street.

So, let complaining bring us together? That's too negative for columns
whose goal, after all, is to build community. Let's go instead with a
sentiment we can all agree with on Labor Day: "Forget catfish and
Krystals, the world's greatest food is barbecue."